


to be needed

by shortitude



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: DOG!!!!, Gen, Modern AU, mentions of raven/finn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-10
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-22 17:23:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7447684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortitude/pseuds/shortitude
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Raven got her dog. (Modern AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	to be needed

**Author's Note:**

> for **semele** ; she asked for Heffy (Hephaestus when he's misbehaving). This is an AU I created with her, and one probably only we will enjoy, but it involves Raven and a dog, so yeah.

College isn’t tough on Raven, it’s living on her own (well, the flatmate doesn’t count because they barely socialize enough to call it an acquaintance, or cohabitation) that gets to her. Sure, she has Finn - but Finn has his friends, and though he says they’re also her friends, they’re not and Raven knows it. She has this nagging feeling that if the worst came to happen and she broke up with Finn, she’d be left without anyone at all, and it’s the loneliness that scares her. Because she’s been alone a long period of her life, even when she lived with her mother, and she knows better now to know that she thrives on surrounding herself with people and warmth and affection. 

(Nevermind that she hasn’t been getting it lately from her own boyfriend, times are hard. College is harder on him, and high school romances are always tested during the first months of it, so Raven can be patient.) 

But yes, it’s not college that’s tough, or the part time job she ends up taking once her flat mate moves out and she decides that it’s easier to work and continue living there than it is to move. The job keeps her mind active and keeps her hands busy on days when she get stood up or her plans - an effort to bring back the same giddy spark she had for him during senior year - get cancelled. Besides, she gets to fiddle with engine parts and restore classics, why would she complain? 

Even so. Come winter, when the days are shorter and the lonely nights feel, somehow, longer and lonelier, she finally begins to feel the weight of it. There is something not working in her life, and Raven is not one to sit with her arms crossed and not do anything about it. She's been used to fixing up her mistakes and other people's mistakes for as long as she can remember, it's how she functions. It's not always healthy, of course - like take, for instance, the stubborn way with which she clings to a relationship that should've fizzled away months ago, but she's struggling because it would be out of character of her to give up on it, and she loves him (right?).

Sometime at the end of November, she's home and awake at two in the morning, paper due on Monday finished and edited, her eyes glued to the screen watching video after video of cute little animals online. It's not the best first step down a slippery slope, but she catches herself before she slips all the way. The next day, she shows up at the local animal shelter and asks if they're taking volunteers. 

For a couple of weeks, she does anything from cleaning cages to sorting through adoptions, sneaking in the occasional overtime petting session with the dogs or the cats. Then, they bring him in. The runt of the litter, her coworker says, found abandoned in a box on a football field, and Raven can tell why: he was meant to be a pedigree breed, but there's a hint of mutt in him, and some people don't deserve to have dogs, not if this is what they do when they get less than perfection. She takes it personally, of course she does, although it won't be until months later that she'll realize just why the situation struck such a hard blow with her. 

At the shelter, you're not supposed to favor one animal over the other, but somehow Raven knows from the first time she set food down into the puppy's cage that she's a goner, and this one's her favorite. He's not exactly a puppy, to be fair; black, with the physiognomy of a Great Dane, minus the 'great' part, the dog is young and energetic and trusting, so trusting. He bumps his forehead against the cage bars the first time Raven crouches in front of it, like he knows she will pet him because he can feel how much love she has in her to give and how few outlets for it. She calls him Heffy, because Hephaestus' was the story that resonated with her the most when she was a child - abandoned because his simple existence isn't enough, because his parents demand perfection and he is not - and for a couple of days she pretends like she's not going to take him home. 

The day she brings Heffy home for the first time, he follows her around like a - well - puppy, waiting for her permission to eat, to drink, waiting with his chin on the edge of her bed to see if she'll let him join her. She promised herself she wouldn't let the dog get away with everything, promised she wouldn't let him sleep in her bed because he's going to get much, much bigger. She forgets the promise right away, and pats the spot next to her, laughing when the Heffy climbs up in two seconds flat, and licks her face in gratitude. She falls asleep that night, warm and with a relatively heavy dog curled up protectively at her back, feeling like some pieces are finally fitting together right. 

It never occurs to her to remember that once upon a time, Finn mentioned he was a little allergic to dogs. Because, fuck it, whatever; this one is something she does for herself. And for Heffy; someone finally needs her.


End file.
